Tagg Romney Says “No Thanks” to Those Floating His Name for Senate for Massachusetts

It’ll be a Romney-less election in April to fill now-Secretary of Defense John Kerry’s senate seat after all. Trial balloons trying to get losing Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s wife Ann to enter the fray fizzled. And you could say that a Boston Herald report flatly saying he was seriously considering entering the race a)bombed b)didn’t do that paper’s credibility any good. (Was their source Dick Morris?)

“I have been humbled by the outreach I received this weekend encouraging me to become a candidate for the US Senate. I love my home state and admit it would be an honor to represent the citizens of our great Commonwealth. However, I am currently committed to my business and to spending as much time as I can with my wife and children. The timing is not right for me, but I am hopeful that the people of Massachusetts will select someone of great integrity, vision, and compassion as our next US Senator.”

Notice he says “outreach” which suggests the report was floated by someone and fed to a reporter. If this is what occurred and the younger Romney decided not to go in, rather than he himself feeding the story to the paper as a feeler, than it’s the classic case of a news story being used to try and nudge someone into a race. As many reporters will tell you, anonymous sources can be gold but they also often have a motive. This earlier story was either a feeler by GOPers frantic to find someone with a name big enough to replacate Scott Brown’s special election victory when he replaced Teddy Kennedy, or a feeler from Romney.

I suspect it was the first possibility — since it came on the heels of all the stories about Ann Romney.

This was always a bit puzzling for one reason: Mitt Romney may have been governor of Massachusetts, but he had virtually repudiated that Mitt Romney and in the Presidential election you can’t exactly say he won the state by a landslide. In fact, he didn’t win his own state. Or his other second state — Michigan. Ann or Tagg Romney would have also likely run into backlash for running strictly on their name in Massachusetts. But wait! Teddy Kennedy ran on his name when he won the seat, cashing in on his bro John F. Kennedy’s name.

But you know a version of the now political cliche: “I followed Ted Kennedy and John Kennedy. Ted Kennedy and John Kennedy were from a neighboring state of mine. And Ann and Tripp Romney, you are no Ted or John Kennedy…”

At this point, the Massachusetts GOP is fast running out of options. The one possible candidate is Mitt Romney’s former Lt. Governor Kerry Healey, but if she’s going to run she needs to move fast. In order to get on the ballot, a candidate needs to submit 10,000 signatures on a petition in the next 23 days.